About

The Pharmacoepidemiology and Infectious Diseases (Pharmacoépidémiologie et Maladies Infectieuses – PhEMI) research group is directed by Didier Guillemot. It is affiliated to Institut Pasteur, Inserm and Université de Versailles Saint Quentin.

The group constitutes team 1 of the B2PhI unit (Biomathematics, Biostatistics, Pharmaco-epidemiology and infectious diseases, mixed research unit UMR1181

It is located in two different sites: Institut Pasteur Paris, and the UVSQ Medical School, Saint Quentin en Yvelines. This team is now affiliated with ED570 “Public health”. It is also strongly involved in academic programs of the UVSQ (master teaching).

The research group is a part of the Labex “Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases” (grant n°ANR–10–LABX–62–IBEID) funded by the French Government’s Investissement d’Avenir program.

Research activities

Our research activities focus on the effects of population exposure to anti-infective drugs (antibiotics and vaccines), particularly in terms of risk of infection, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and vaccine evasion. We investigate the interactions between human populations, antimicrobial drugs, and antimicrobial evasion by microbes at the population level, in both hospital and community settings. Our studies aim at evaluating the respective and combined impacts of cross-transmission, host-bacterium interaction (natural or induced by vaccination), and the modification of population exposure to antibiotics and vaccines.

With that objective, we use a combination of ad hoc epidemiological investigations and population-wide databases. These processes involve the refinement of statistical methods, applications of mathematical modelling (population dynamics) and computerized simulation, and more recently, social-science methods.

The specific challenges of our research programs are:

To improve our understanding and quantify the influence of selection due to exposure to anti-infective drugs on the spread and evasion mechanisms of human pathogens.

To investigate the factors related to the dynamics of pathogenic microorganisms including epidemicity of clones, exposure to anti-infectives, and contacts between individuals.

To assess the public-health impact of changes in exposure to antimicrobial drugs.

We are working specifically on several human pathogenic multidrug resistant bacteria (MRB): Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacteriaceae and other pathogens such as HPV, Chlamydia trachomatis, Influenza …

In addition to our research projects, we pilot two large cohorts:

BIRDY (ex CHARLI): an international paediatric cohort in low income countries to estimate the burden (incidence rate, clinical and economic consequences) of infections with bacteria resistant to antibiotics in neonates and infants and young children (up to 2 years of age) in these settings. The cohort was set up in three different countries, through collaborations with the Institut Pasteur Network with already more than 3000 children included. Additionally to be a unique opportunity to get insight into bacterial infections in neonates, the study is a very attractive platform allowing research groups to develop fundamental research.

I-Share: an Internet–based Students HeAlth Research Enterprise.It is an entirely new, prospective cohort of 30,000 students registered in the first years of study at the Universities of Bordeaux and Versailles Saint Quentin during five years and followed for at least 10 years thereafter with yearly assessments. This cohort is supported and partially funded by the French government as part of the 2010 cohort research initiative of the program “Investissements d’Avenir”. C Tzourio (UMR1219) is the principal investigator of the i-Share program and D Guillemot is the principal investigator of the infectious disease work package.

The Pharmacoepidemiology and Infectious Diseases research group was launched at the Institut Pasteur in 2007 as a team of the Inserm unit U657, and later on as a unit of Institut Pasteur in January 2008. After an AERES evaluation (February 2009), the group also became a research team at the University of Versailles Saint Quentin (UVSQ) in January 2010. After two subsequent AERES evaluations, the group has been re-affiliated to Inserm in January 2011 as a team of U657 and to Pasteur in January 2012. In January 2015, following an AERES evaluation, this group has become a team (team 1) of the two-team B2PhI unit (Biomathematics, Biostatistics, Pharmaco-epidemiology and infectious diseases, mixed research unit UMR1181).